This really is kind of pointless, and yes, as someone else stated, the only technical boundary here is buffer space, either (presumably) disk, or memory. Assuming they're using disk, it's not like there's some big technical reason why it can't be changed (or even user configurable).

You could just as easily ask why the PS4 has a 15 minute limit as well. Both are arbitrary.

The only reasonable limitation is contiguous free space just to make sure fragmentation doesn't affect performance (if the new consoles have platters and not SSDs), but still, 5 minutes is no easier than 15, as long as you're willing to give up the space.

I totally agree. For standard FPS games (exception example: battlefield), most matches last around 10 minutes. Being able to play completely through a game and have the option to upload its entirety is a huge feature YouTube uploaders will surely love with the PS4. Xbox definitely lost on this one, but hopefully they'll increase the recording time in future console updates. I'm not really sure what the thought process is behind both Sony and Microsoft for allowing their own respective recording lengths, but Sony definitely chose the right path here. Maybe Microsoft will follow suit.

Either way, this is a very cool feature that I could see becoming extremely popular.

Why not just make the recording buffer customizable to a certain degree? Seems that the only hurdle here is hard drive space. There's no reason to add a limit unless game publishers are putting on some pressure. (Though, last I heard, Let's Play videos were fair use.)

I totally agree. For standard FPS games (exception example: battlefield), most matches last around 10 minutes. Being able to play completely through a game and have the option to upload its entirety is a huge feature YouTube uploaders will surely love with the PS4. Xbox definitely lost on this one, but hopefully they'll increase the recording time in future console updates. I'm not really sure what the thought process is behind both Sony and Microsoft for allowing their own respective recording lengths, but Sony definitely chose the right path here. Maybe Microsoft will follow suit.

Either way, this is a very cool feature that I could see becoming extremely popular.

Yeah, they need to make the system able to save AT LEAST a full match or two of the most popular games (Games people will be most likely to upload). Makes sense from a use standpoint.

And with the editing and accessability features for this recording, it's unlikely that anyone that's serious about this will even bother with the features entirely, no matter how long the buffer is.

Both companies missed the point with this. Just recording gameplay and putting it up on YouTube or whatever without any other work only really, well, works in cases like people uploading videos of Super Robot Wars animations and the like (and even then, the best animation videos do editing to splice together a unit's entire weapon list, and cut out unnecessary bits in the animation). If you're doing the sorts of things MS and Sony are claiming these buffers are for, then you want to do post-processing. That's why I finally went and got an HDMI-compatable external recording box to go alongside my composite/component one.

And with the editing and accessability features for this recording, it's unlikely that anyone that's serious about this will even bother with the features entirely, no matter how long the buffer is.

You have it confirmed that you can only post directly to specific video sites (ie: Youtube) and have no way of getting the video on local computer for editing? Otherwise, it can do what you're already doing but without having to buy external hardware. That makes it more universally appealing to post videos.

I totally agree. For standard FPS games (exception example: battlefield), most matches last around 10 minutes. Being able to play completely through a game and have the option to upload its entirety is a huge feature YouTube uploaders will surely love with the PS4. Xbox definitely lost on this one, but hopefully they'll increase the recording time in future console updates. I'm not really sure what the thought process is behind both Sony and Microsoft for allowing their own respective recording lengths, but Sony definitely chose the right path here. Maybe Microsoft will follow suit.

Either way, this is a very cool feature that I could see becoming extremely popular.

I can see it becoming like Facebook, where every participant believes everyone else is interested in what they have to say, but any given user doesn't care what anyone else is saying.

I didn't read anything here about having a maximum limit of 5 minute long videos, like everyone seems to be interpreting this as saying for some reason. This is saying that it stores a rolling 5 minutes of past gameplay, but isn't saying that you can't set a recording to capture more than that. XBox One has been confirmed to integrate with Twitch, which also in turn means that pretty much any length of gameplay can be recorded.

This is more for keeping track of those 'Dang, that was awesome, I wish I would have recorded that' sort of things.

Using Xsplit or FRAPS, recording videos easily can take a lot of HDD space. With both systems installing most if not all the game to the HDD, there will not be a lot of space to record long videos to your HDD.

Being able to Sream to twitch.tv will be the better option. Your quality will depend on your bandwidth but you do not have to use up HDD space. Stream to twitch, then you can decide if you want to make a clip or save the entire video. Not everyone has the bandwidth to stream at 720 tho.

Any way to turn this off? I'd rather not waste the CPU cycles and hard disk writes.

Ditto. I'm certain that some people will find this feature valuable, but the only feature that I care for as far as screen-casting goes is the ability to block recording at the system level to help me pretend there isn't a "Share" button when I hunker down for a relaxing Internet-and-social-media-free single-player experience.

I didn't read anything here about having a maximum limit of 5 minute long videos, like everyone seems to be interpreting this as saying for some reason. This is saying that it stores a rolling 5 minutes of past gameplay, but isn't saying that you can't set a recording to capture more than that. XBox One has been confirmed to integrate with Twitch, which also in turn means that pretty much any length of gameplay can be recorded.

This is more for keeping track of those 'Dang, that was awesome, I wish I would have recorded that' sort of things.

But you can record at 720p/1080p locally while Twitch quality depends on your bandwidth (and hardware in your PCs case).

I doubt this will happen, but I kinda wish there was an opt-out for this feature.

The reason I say that is, in the current generation when I put a lot of time into games that saved long replays (Fifa is my best example), it seemed like my hard drive degraded faster, and I would slowly get more frequent skipping and freezing issues... until I replaced the hard drive to make all the problems go away temporarily, and start the cycle over again.

And with the editing and accessability features for this recording, it's unlikely that anyone that's serious about this will even bother with the features entirely, no matter how long the buffer is.

You have it confirmed that you can only post directly to specific video sites (ie: Youtube) and have no way of getting the video on local computer for editing? Otherwise, it can do what you're already doing but without having to buy external hardware. That makes it more universally appealing to post videos.

The linked article from CVG says it, as does previous statements about these features. Not even counting that both systems have a limited buffer that makes it unusable for things of real length, all you can do with the recorded content is upload it to a video sharing website. If you want to do any post-processing, you need to upload, then download and convert from the lossy web format (if you can even do that).

While both will let you stream directly to their streaming service of choice, at least the Xone has already made it clear that it allows for picture-in-picture overlays of you and your own commentary through Kinect. But only for streaming. Maybe the PS4 will also have this feature with the Eye, but I haven't seen it made clear yet.

And even if the video data is just sitting on the HD, and able to be pulled from the console to your computer? Why would you do that when it's only the last 15 minutes (PS4) or 5 minutes (Xone) of footage? Not even a selectable period of time. About the only thing this is good for is people being able to quickly grab a recording of the game when some ridiculous bug suddenly happens.

The feature is appealing to me only because it will allow me to capture those inevitable "Holy shit!" moments that can emerge from gameplay. I wish it was a feature back when Warhawk was popular. That game constantly delivered on emergent moments/narrative.

For general use, I think that 5 minutes is plenty. Honestly, 90 seconds is probably plenty. When something awesome happens, and you want to retroactively save it, how much lead-up was usually relevant? If I can't tell where a video's going after 30 seconds, I'm not watching more of it...

As for longer-form videos, I have to imagine that individual games can use the recording hardware to make longer clips if the typical game scenarios warrant it (i.e. if the Call of Duty: Ghosts developers want to enable you to publish full matches, they will).

it's a "nice-to-have" feature... I would say Microsoft should make it game-dependant, like 1 full MP match or 5 minutes in a solo game (would help with confirming reports of cheats/hacks). I say 1 full match because most people don't wait 3 matches then say "yeah, that one guy a few matches ago was totally cheating" and submit a complaint. That way they can improve the complaint-filing system by pulling a copy of the gameplay record as well.

Any way to turn this off? I'd rather not waste the CPU cycles and hard disk writes.

Both systems hand this off to a separate processor with its own dedicated buffer. That impacts the hardware cost/price, but it shouldn't impact performance at all.

Actually it will still impact performance due to it having to push a copy of the feed to the extra hardware space to begin with.

In essence you have a system that is continuously writing everything twice and a universal controller keeping track of multiple items.

I have not come across a "new" game system ever that has not increased wait time or content load time beyond the system it replaces. My PS3 takes longer to load and transition games than my PS2 did - as did my PS2 over my PS1. My PS1 took longer than my NES. My NES took more effort than did my Atari 2600.

There is no reason to believe that significantly mroe complex games on a newer system (PS4 or XBox) will be any different and somehow magically load and push content faster than the systems they replace.

Any way to turn this off? I'd rather not waste the CPU cycles and hard disk writes.

Both systems hand this off to a separate processor with its own dedicated buffer. That impacts the hardware cost/price, but it shouldn't impact performance at all.

Actually it will still impact performance due to it having to push a copy of the feed to the extra hardware space to begin with.

In essence you have a system that is continuously writing everything twice and a universal controller keeping track of multiple items.

I have not come across a "new" game system ever that has not increased wait time or content load time beyond the system it replaces. My PS3 takes longer to load and transition games than my PS2 did - as did my PS2 over my PS1. My PS1 took longer than my NES. My NES took more effort than did my Atari 2600.

There is no reason to believe that significantly mroe complex games on a newer system (PS4 or XBox) will be any different and somehow magically load and push content faster than the systems they replace.

While you will likely be correct in the end, I would just like to mention the existence of external recording devices that manage to do this exact same service with no delay in the video output. Which is because making a copy of the data as it passes through the system is pretty easy, and the separate processor for that recording is the only one that needs to worry about controlling that data and processing it.

Basically, if this feature works as they are claiming it's configured, you should see the same performance hit as if you hooked up a Hauppauge HD PVR to your 360. Which is to say, you shouldn't. Could it still, though? Certainly.

I can see it becoming like Facebook, where every participant believes everyone else is interested in what they have to say, but any given user doesn't care what anyone else is saying.

Oh I know. Most of the videos that get uploaded are terrible. But every now and then you'll get one that you find interesting. Hopefully people will get more creative with their uploads in the future. I feel like the biggest benefit we could get from this is walkthroughs showing easter eggs or shortcuts or the like.